5 Steps to Improve Coaching Effectiveness for Frontline Supervisors

Delivering Effective Coaching That Strengthens Performance in an Increasingly Complex CX Ecosystem 

5 Steps to Improve Coaching Effectiveness for Frontline Supervisors is a free webinar available on demand, presented by iQor and AmplifAI. David Arellano, head of product at AmplifAI, joined the authors of this blog post: Saurabh Bhaskar, iQor’s senior vice president of operations, and Anthony Paige, director of training and quality for iQor. Here’s an overview of what they discussed.

Measuring and Improving Frontline Coaching Effectiveness Is Critical 

Eighty percent of agents who leave contact centers do so because of their frontline supervisor. And the biggest challenge these supervisors face is usually their own interpersonal coaching skills. Effective frontline coaching is the best way to sustain and improve agent performance. This means measuring and improving frontline coaching effectiveness is critical to achieving desired outcomes. 

iQor invests heavily in recruiting, training, and coaching frontline employees. We want everyone we hire to enjoy a long and successful career with us. That’s why we provide professional learning opportunities and pathways to advancement. Coaching has always been a priority. 

Automation Has Changed Agents’ Roles 

In recent years, automation has taken on many of the more mundane tasks that agents used to perform, leaving them to handle more high-skill and high-value tasks.  

The growth of multi-channel and omnichannel customer experience—and all the digital CX technologies that make them possible—has enabled that complexity. Every CX interaction is recorded. Proprietary data analytics technologies scour recordings in search of opportunities for improvement through coaching and examples of best practices in action.  

Contact Center Complexity and Data Overload Create New Coaching Challenges 

Several years ago, the increasing complexity of the agent ecosystem began to leave supervisors wondering what their next coaching step should be. There was so much data and no efficient, effective, and accurate way to make sure coaching aligned with business priorities or measured coaching effectiveness. 

Fifty-six percent of contact center employees say job complexity is a top challenge. 

One Solution to Reduce Complexity, Identify Business-Critical Coaching Opportunities, and Measure Coaching Effectiveness 

We wanted to allow our supervisors to spend less time with data and more time coaching, so we researched numerous potential solutions.  

We invested in: AmplifAI, an AI-driven performance enablement platform that:  

• Facilitates coaching events by surfacing the most impactful coaching opportunities. 
• Reduces complexity by telling supervisors what they need to do next (based on specific coaching goals). 
• Reports on agent performance in key areas. 
• Identifies the type of coaching that agents and coaches need.  
• Measures coaching effectiveness. 

How Webinar Attendees Rate Their Coaching Effectiveness of Frontline Employees 

14%	43%	14%	4%	25%
Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor	Not Measuring

Three years later, results from our strong partnership with AmplifAI—and the solution’s sophisticated AI and machine learning—have proved that investing in AmplifAI was the right decision.  

iQor employs AmplifAI to help coaches coach and measure coaching effectiveness. The five steps to improve coaching effectiveness show you how we work together. 

1. Create and Communicate Your Coaching System 

Your coaching system—the technology that facilitates the coaching process and measures coaching effectiveness—can only be as good as the coaching itself. 

iQor and AmplifAI align on what good coaching looks like: 

• Proactive coaching with a specific goal in mind that enables the agent to perform their job better. 
• Frontline leaders customize coaching to the individual agent’s learning style, whether that’s visual, audio, kinetic, or digital. 
• Even in flexible work environments where agents can work at home or on premise, all agents are trained equally well.  
• Supervisors need to be able to focus on their team, not the data, and provide specific actions the agent can deliver. 
• Quick onboarding, consistent training, and effective coaching contribute to improved retention. 
• Better employee experience translates to improved customer experience. 

To create your coaching system, you’ll also need clear expectations about:  

• What the system can and will do for you. 
• How much you’ll use the system for coaching. 
• Methods you’ll use to facilitate coaching events. 
• KPIs that are most important to the business. 
• What constitutes coaching success. 

For iQor, the system provides easy-to-review performance data that show where everyone stands in relation to their goals, their team, and their program. 

2. Train Coaches How to Communicate and Develop Others 

In contact centers, supervisors are often former agents who were promoted from within.  

All agents need to be able to communicate effectively. Those who become supervisors (and coach others) also need to have the right underlying skillset, which includes the ability to help others change their behavior.  

At iQor, developing a new leader includes providing best practices for follow-through and leadership skills training. Plus, new leaders are trained to leverage technology that will help them be effective coaches. 

3. Provide Visibility Into Performance and Testing 

With AmplifAI, the system’s AI can be trained to identify coaching opportunities with the greatest potential impact and direct coaching activities to the right metrics, individuals, and tactics to add the greatest lift to performance.  

The AI cuts right through the complexity to show supervisors what they need to do next, offering coaching suggestions unique to each agent’s individual needs. This enables supervisors to save time they once spent determining which potential coaching opportunities to pursue—up to 40% of their time—and devote that time to coaching.

The AI cuts right through the complexity to show supervisors what they need to do next, offering coaching suggestions unique to each agent’s individual needs. This enables supervisors to save time they once spent determining which potential coaching opportunities to pursue—up to 40% of their time—and devote that time to coaching.  

Should KPIs change—along with the behaviors required to achieve success with those KPIs—the system can be tuned to reflect which coaching opportunities are important. iQor’s close working relationship with AmplifAI makes those kinds of changes easy to make. 

4. Measure Coaching Effectiveness 

Measuring coaching effectiveness is critical to understanding which coaches are doing exceptionally well and deserve recognition, and those who could benefit from coaching. 

5. Learn From Successful Coaches 

Many coaches are good at walking their agents through processes and expectations. Some are good at helping agents buy into and become a part of the learning and development process. Others are great at helping the agent understand how this change will benefit them. 

By measuring coaching effectiveness, you can identify where individual coaches could benefit most from coaching. 

AmplifAI points to the most successful coaching lessons in a given area. That enables other coaches to learn how to modify their own behavior based on how the most successful coaches teach those lessons. Also, coaches can use those lessons when coaching agents. 

The best coaching helps improve outcomes for agents, keeps agents more engaged, and contributes to their long-term success. 

The Proof Is in the Results 

When a telecom client asked iQor to shift their KPI emphasis from customer satisfaction (CSAT) to net promoter score (NPS), we turned to AmplfAI to identify opportunities to coach the behaviors needed to improve NPS. By focusing on the metrics that matter most, AmplifAI reduced the number of dashboards and reports that coaches were required to review. 

With a significant increase in coaching and more time spent on effective agent development, we produced these results for the client: 

• 6x improvement in customer resolution time. 
• An increase in NPS ranging from 2.5% at the beginning of the test period to an increase of 13% at the end of the test period. 
• 40% more coaching sessions with tracking and accountability. 

Your Next Step 

For the complete case study details, plus charts, graphs, more in-depth discussion of the points referenced here, and an easy-to-understand look at how AmplifAI works, watch the webinar. It’s free and available on demand. 

Experience the Best in CX 

We partner with clients to design the optimal mix of CX automation and people. iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX. 

Our award-winning CX services include: 

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries. 
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice. 
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI. 
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers. 
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want. 
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers. 
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business. 

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles. 

Saurabh Bhaskar is senior vice president of operations at iQor. 

Anthony Paige is director of training and quality at iQor.